A Halo Story
by H. Roach
Summary: A young officer is on a special mission with a veteran Spartan.
1. Chapter 1

"Get down." The command spurs me to action. I crouch in place, and feel the passage of a sticky grenade whiz over my head. The blue static glow of the alien explosive makes the fine hairs on my arms stand up under my armor. There is a growing sound, that isn't a sound so much as a sensation of sound. The bang makes my ears ring a little bit, despite the sound dampener on my helmet. I finger my B.R.'s trigger and swing up and over my cover.

The sticky grenade had taken out the Brute's armor. The creature was roaring though, and he seemed like he was going to charge any minute. Battle rage in Brutes is the scariest thing. Elites are worse, they're smart. Brutes well, they're big and fast. They work well with each other, and with the Grunts, but they aren't the smartest creature in the galaxy.

I squeeze on my battle rifle's trigger. Its running low on ammunition. That's not surprising since I'd pulled it off a dead ODST a few minutes ago. I hear the pre-measured amount of automatic fire. I can never count the shots. It doesn't matter, I aim at the head. The creature goes down in a sputtering rage.

The Spartan who'd chucked the grenade had taken care of the Grunts that had been scattering at impact of the bomb. He gave a half assed salute towards me, and gestured that we keep going.

"Keep moving kid. We don't have a lot of time to slow down." He said, his flat voice echoing into my helmet. I nod my agreement. We'd been a full unit before, now, it was just the two of us. This assault wasn't going well, at least not on our side.

The Covenant had attacked the colony a few hours ago. The Capital city was mostly gone. We weren't trying to retake the colony, you don't retake colonies when the Covenant lands. What you do is hold ground long enough for the civilians to escape the bombardment. It's a lesson we learned from the early years of the war.

"Careful." I say quietly to the Spartan. "I've got movement on my HUD." The sensor is flashing red, no UNSC movement, they're yellow.

"Snipe who you can. I'll distract them." How he knows that I prefer sniping, I don't know. What's more, why he's letting me is even stranger. Spartans are better at what soldiers do. He should be sniping, but then, if I was running interference, I'd end up dead. And I still had a job to do.

They're setting up some kind of entrenched position. A lift is in place. Obviously something important is going to happen here, soon. If the Intel is right, a Prophet is coming to oversee the purification of the planet. They weren't going to blow it up like others; they were going to resettle it. That was new. Before now, it had always been about purification by fire. Holy wars are tough, bloody things that never end.

There were a lot of guards, Brutes, a few Elites, and a crap ton of Grunts. The Spartan threw himself into the fray without regard for his life. They did that, that's why they were more than soldier, they were Spartans.

I worked through those that I could with my limited rounds left. I made a few kills, before the battle rifle was empty. I slung it on my back, hoping to find more rounds for it. I pulled out my hand gun; a fairly useless thing meant more for preventing capture than anything. Dipping down I began on the edges, cleaning up the Grunts. Worthless creatures more for cannon fodder than for fighting prowess, the bastards did damage when you weren't paying attention to them.

"Where are you?" My helmet's intercom chirped. The Spartan sounded fine. That he was more concerned about me than anything.

"Outer edge leading in."The answer came as I ripped the breathing apparatus off a little guy. Sometimes I wondered what they were like when not fighting. They seemed, mostly harmless.

"Need a hand." Was all he said. And it seemed that he needed me. I scooted around, and slid over a bunch of rock. A Brute had my Spartan pinned, and was working on him with the butt of a fuel rod gun. I leapt at him, and wrapped short legs around him long enough to get my small gun in his neck and fire. Blue spurts out, covering me, and we topple over, as he twitches into death.

"Well done." A hand is offered to me, and I take it. I'm hauled off my feet and set down upright again. "You still have the charges?" And my purpose in this whole thing was to mule the charges needed to blow the platform. The hefty pack was filled with charges, and a detonator.

"Yes sir."I set to my real job. I'm demolitions. It's what I know, and it's what I'm good at. I set the charges with practiced ease, setting them to my control device. The Spartan is standing guard, imposing as he stands behind me while I work. The hum of the lift is already going the whole thing though is dependent on us timing the explosion with the Prophet's arrival. The planet might be lost, but damned if we aren't going to get some pay back for it. Ironic that the Prophet of Peace is the target, at least it's ironic to me.

"I'm done." I say, strapping the detonator to my armor's glove.

"Apollonia says there is a powering up in progress." The ship's AI had hitched a ride with him for this mission. The Insula Inter Spines was hiding in the planet's rings right now, separate from the evacuation fleets' actions.

"The lifts on?" I ask.

"Yeah, how far do we need to be to clear the explosion?" He asks.

"Cover mostly, unless I hit the button when the Prophet's in transit, but there is no way to know if we got him or not." I tell him. He nods. "Otherwise, over there." I point where we'd come from, indicating the large tunnel system we'd cleaned out of Buggers and Brutes.

"Let's hoof it." He says. The green armored man is already heading back there, and I snatch up a Spiker. The heavy weapon is unwieldy by me, I can't use it to strike with, and the kick back from it is jarring, but it's better than my small caliber weapon.

You can hear the lifts. They have a lot of power. Not like the smaller ones that they use for entrenching, hover pads really that lift up a small platform for shooters. These are more like orbital elevators, which ferry people and stuff up and down. The hum is recognizable and definite and even as the sound of it working to bring down an honor guard for the Prophet. Then the Prophet himself would follow. The small grey being on the hover throne, one of a few that controlled the forces of the Covenant on their holy crusade.

"He's here." The Spartan says. I nod, and toggle the firing switch on my arm. A solid sound that grew into a force that sends me groping for the wall's support. I get an arm instead. I steady myself, and nod my thanks.

"Some juice left in that thing." I say. The increased force wasn't that of the lift being on. There would be a tear in the local universe if that happened. This was a ripple in the universe instead. "These caves must have some kind of mineral deposits in them." I comment, knowing that it's what saved us from vaporization. Outside there were only boulders that sizzled, nothing of the lush forest that had been there only moments before.

"Pick up, at the LZ." He says without preamble. He's already working through the tunnels again, double time. I follow behind him, moving as fast as my shorter legs could go. I'm a soldier, but sometimes short legs make it hard to keep up regardless of training.

The other side of the tunnels, old lava tubes heading out to the ocean, was as lush as the other side had been. The animals hooted wildly, the sounds of fighting were louder now, humans were almost gone, and the Covenant would already know about the Prophet of Peace.

The LZ was the beach. The dead bodies of the rest of our unit still littered around. I stole a few last looks towards my comrades. I saw the Spines hit the atmosphere, the fire of reentry making a line blazing in the sky. It slowed down, and sent down a Pelican for pick up.

"Its strange, right?" I ask waiting for the Pelican to get close enough to board.

"What?"His voice was flat, still. Like we hadn't just blown up a leader of the enemy, striking a blow against the command structure.

"There are no human settlements here, so why was the Prophet landing here, on this island?"

"Is what intelligence said would happen…" He says. I feel my face crinkle up behind my visor. He knows more than he's saying. Of course he knows more, he's got the ship's AI in his helmet feeding him information.

"That's not the point. Why would he? What's here that he would risk coming down personally for?" I ask, curiousity being my chief flaw, and the most likely reason for me getting shifted out of ODST.

"Its not something you want to know about, kid." He points out as the Pelican hovers nearby for us to board. "Just know we did well." He gives me a hand up, not that I need it really. Its kind of a sign I think, that he was proud that I didn't die. That a Spartan could be proud of an ODST, simply because she didn't die, who knew?


	2. Chapter 2

"All hands brace for impact." The feminine voice of Apolloniana said calmly as the ship bucked underneath us. Tossed in the air I scrambled to grab a bulk head. Instead I grapple a magnetically anchored Spartan.

"We have to stop meeting like this." I say to him. His face is hidden by his helmet.

"We're going down." His voice is calm like Apolloniana's, but he doesn't push me off as the Spine bounces everyone else around. The metal deck seems to be trying to get me bouncing around like everyone else.

"No crap." I bark at him. The ship is exploding now. Computers blowing up, energy transfer conduits sparking, and all of it around us in the landing pad. The gravity plates were keeping the Pelicans in place. Otherwise the Pelicans and Scorpion Tanks would be rushing to crush us into paste against the walls.

"When the power goes off we'll be in real trouble." He says loudly enough for the pilots to hear as well. They are holding onto a nearby pylon. A nod from them makes the Spartan move into action. The lights are already flickering, and the ship hasn't made any announcements since the 'brace for impact'.

"What happened?"

"Something came out of slip stream."

"More Covenant?" I ask nervously.

"She doesn't know." He answered. The sound of his boots clamping on the metal floor towards the pylon with the pilots was jarring. The sounds of the ship were only mildly hidden by the sounds of my jaw slamming together.

The pilots grappled the Spartan as well, holding on to his closest arm. He moved towards the main exit, slowly as the ship started to screech.

"Where are you taking us?"

"Main shaft, escape pods." The Spartan said calmly. I held on to his utility belt, precariously close to the remaining grenades. The ship bucks again, and there is a sudden drop that has me off my feet. Lieutenant Huxley squeaks indignantly as she fights to stay holding on to the Spartan.

"That was the front half of the ship snapping off." Major Frakes says with a look towards main hall. A bulk head was sealing them off from the vacuum.

"We should get into a Pelican."

"And play ping pong in it? I'd rather get smashed and die instantly." Huxley says with a look towards the failing grav-pads.

"No, the Kid's right, we wait for the plate to fail and then fly it out. We can help gather up the survivors." Frakes cuts in.

"Whatever you guys want to d- damn it KID!" I was skidding across the deck. I already knew it would take those two hours to figure out which one was right. They weren't able to make decisions together unless there was someone else demanding it. Usually that someone else was the Commander of the Ship. But we were a little separated from him at the moment.

The Pelican we'd come up in, was still at the active pad. It was like swimming across a river with a strong current. But I ended up face planting into it. The metal smashed my nose in, and I cursed. My helmet was bouncing around somewhere, forgotten in the chaos.

The door was open still. I grappled my way through, and pushed into the cock pit. I flicked switches on, and started pre-flight.

"What the hell are you doing Specialist?" Frakes yells at me.

"Sorry sir, I had to get us doing something." I say. The others are in the Pelican inside now too. The Spartan hit the close button and I caught the last sight of the Spine.

"I'll court marshal you later." He brushed past me and I saw Huxley give me a death glare. I bounced back as the gravity plate finally lost all power and the Pelican was free. I felt the engines cut on, and the gravity of the free fall cut off. I fell with a thud to the floor.

"You alright?" The Spartan asks, holding out a hand to me. He hauls me up, and sets me down in the personal seating area. Before I can reach up for the restrains, my Spartan has me buckled in. I watch him with mild irritation.

"Hold on back there this isn't going to be pretty." The Major shouts at us. We're slammed into, by what I can only imagine as other Pelicans now loose in the bay. "Shit the Scorpions are loose too."

"Of course they are, they've got the same power source."

"This is going to be interesting." The Spartan said.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Well, if we're going to die, I don't want to die with someone I only know as a number. What's your name?" The Pelican is taking off, the banging has stopped. But I know that means we've left the Spine. There are no view ports for me to look out of. Even if I could, my height would keep me from seeing out of them.

"Charles, my name is Charles." He says levelly.

"Hi." I say with an uncontrolled squeak.

"Some ODST you are." He says with a mocking tone.

"We drop in egg shaped cubicles of doom, this is not cool." I say with a clutch on my restraints. "And helmets, have I mentioned that we wear helmets?" The ship drops a hundred feet and my stomach lurched.

"Fair enough."

"I don't have a weapon." I say suddenly.

"Don't sweat it until you need something to shoot." The Spartan tells me.

"Atmosphere in five"

"These ships aren't designed to go into atmosphere with out help." I say clinically.

"No they aren't."

"Three seconds." Huxley says loudly. "Two, one." Atmosphere is like hitting a wall at these speeds. The real trick is to crash through the wall, and not bounce off of it. The impact sends my legs and arms flying about. We settled off after a moment or two of terror, and the planets gravity settled into my stomach.

"That wasn't so bad." I say. It might have been premature.

"Impact-"

"What-" The ship spun out. The flat spin pinning me to the bulk head. I closed my eyes tightly. A shimmy had my head slammed into the bulk head. The crack made my hands tingle and my vision tunnel to black.

"Kid, wake up."

"Ouch."

"How many fingers?" He holds up three fingers.

"six?" I say with a groan. The world is a spectacular shade of metal gray. "Pelican still?" I ask.

"Yes. We just landed." I look towards the cock pit, and there is foliage.

"Crashed into a tree you mean. The Major and Lieutenant?"

"Fell out the front when we hit. They didn't wear their restraints." He said flatly.

"I hope they are alright."

"I doubt it. We're pretty high up." He helps me up again. My head swims, and I leaned over to throw up. There was a wet splash of rations hitting the deck, and watched it slide towards the door.

"Gross."

"Concussion." He said calmly. "You should have left your helmet on."

"Yeah, yeah." I lever myself upright, and look towards the exit.

"I'll pop the top and then we can climb down."

"Good enough for me." I concur.

"You up to that?"

"My armor is, I don't know about the rest of me." I laugh a bit. He hits the open switch and the green light goes red. Beneath us opens up a tropical world, filled with plants and animals, and I can't even see through to the bottom.

"Here." He grabs me up. His arm holds me close. "Hold on." And he jumps. The bastard jumps down, holding me to him into the foliage. He doesn't stop when we hit the first branch. He jumps again, and again and again until we reach the bottom. He lets me go, and I throw up again. I'd left my equilibrium behind in the crashed Pelican.

"Uhg."

"You should stop doing that." He points out.

"I don't think I can anymore, that was what I had for dinner three nights ago." I point out the dubious looking orange chunks. Field rations aren't exactly easily digested.

"Here." A stupid handgun is near my face. I take it, grumpily. I hate the things. They were weak. I attached it to the spot on my belt for it. It was at least something lethal.

"Any clue where we are, and where any of the other survivors are?"

"Probably all over the planet. We were in high orbit."

"Did Apolloniana make it down with you?"

"No. She stayed with the ship." He looked at his wrist screen. "There is some kind of beacon ahead."

"UNSC or Covenant?"

"Neither." He answers. "I don't recognize it."

"Lemme see." I haul his arm down towards me and look at the screen. The display isn't showing anything I recognized either. I compared it to my read out, and they were the same.

"And?" I swear his tone was dry. It was dry and mildly amused.

"I don't recognize it either." I say airily. My head is spinning still, and the idea of wandering about aimlessly wasn't something I cherished. But the strange beacon represented a goal, and with my head the goal was enough to keep me going.

"Stay close to me. I don't like this forest. There is something-odd about it." He moved his head about like he was looking about.

"Really, it reminds me of home." I say falling in behind him, handgun in my hands, ready to fire.

"Home."

"Yeah home, Helios III." I tell him. "I mean its not as rain-forest-y, but its similar." I pause a moment looking around me.

"Keep up." He barks at me.

"Hold on a second." I say, paused right where I was. There was a major problem now, and I couldn't figure out what it was.

"Kid?" He looks at me.

There is one word on my lips, and I hear it as my head spins around again. I've had concussions before. In my line of work, it's almost a normal state of being. I've felt the vertigo they cause, and the stomach churning mental status. I know what's what when my head is dented. This was not a concussion. This was something else, something different.


	3. Chapter 3

Helios III was a planet of sunshine. Colonized during the Colony Wars, Helios was meant to be a place for those tired of war, to live and work.

After Harvest, Helios became just one more lost colony to the Covenant. I was ten when I was sent to my family on Earth, the only one of my father's family to make it to the evacuation point. It had been seven years since Harvest at that point.

I don't remember a time before the war with the Covenant. They loomed like the boogie men of space. My mom used to threaten me with them. 'Be good or the Brutes will get you.' 'Don't do that, or the Elites will steal you away and sell you as pet food.' I misbehaved a lot as a child.

Home is gone. Helios III is a slab of molten glass like so many other colonies settled by humans. Except, right now, I swear I can hear the Boundless Sea. That when I open my eyes, I will see the blue beaches and bluer water, and when I wake up I'll be ten again, spending time with my family in the summer home.

"Wake up." That's not the voice of my father. My father's voice wasn't so flat.

"Ten more minutes." My head is fit to explode into chunks of brain and skull. It feels like someone's stuffed it full of steel wool and is now playing with a magnet.

"No, you need to wake up. We don't have time to waste on you getting conscious." There is something stinky at my nose. And no matter how I try to brush it away, I can't. The fight to make the stink go away, makes me remember that I passed out.

"What the hell happened?" I ask in a slur. The sun shining down is familiar, and pleasant. IT hits my face with warmth that sinks in.

"You collapsed."

"I know that." I grimace at him. I push myself up out of the mud. "Forget it."

"There is a field being generated, five klicks that way." He points roughly south west. "You don't have your helmet." And I want to smack my forehead angrily. The helmets, Spartan or ODST, anyone really who ends up in strange places, are constructed to keep out foreign frequencies of any sort. They started this after the Covenant tested some devices that made an entire population of a colony, albeit a small one, made their heads literally implode into mush.

It made their ground troops do the same, so it wasn't ever used again, so far. But it was a fear that the Covenant forces would use it as a way to protect their facilities.

My helmet was either destroyed with the rest of the Spine, or it was now floating in high orbit over the planet. Either way it wasn't on my head, where it belonged. That meant that the strange energy field radiating out from five klicks, was probably microwaving my brain like a poodle.

"Stupid ass helmet." I curse bitterly. "I guess you don't have steel wool being pulled out through your ears."

"Nope." He taps his head. I can't see his face. I wish I could.

"Nothing to it then." I say looking through the trees like I could see the source. "Do me a favor, when my head explodes, tell my Grandma what happened? Just without the chunky bits."

"I'll try." He promises. "You ready?"

"Yeah let's go." I say and start walking again.

The forest is dense and tall. We have to take knives to the growth to make our way through. Five kilometers turns into a trial. The steel wool turns into electricity that gave off charges that temporarily turns off a sense. I refuse to give into it again, as much as I want to. Instead we walk on, hacking at the plants.

Whatever is making me feel like crap, remained hidden until it was right in front of us. I nearly walked into it, but was saved by Charles the Spartan grabbing my armor's collar and yanking me back.

"It's a building." The man said behind me. "I don't recognize the make." He added taking in the material.

There were plants growing on it, so much so that t was hard to see it as anything but a mound of plants. Then midway up to the canopy there was a section that had nothing growing on it. Instead iridescent black material glowed faintly of its own power.

The whistle I gave was appreciative. My throbbing head pulsed in time with the glow, and I reasoned that it was the source of all things wrong with my head.

"I've seen this before…" The black material was familiar. "I know this."

"Scans say there is an opening that way." He points again, vaguely towards the southern point of the structure.

The opening was covered with vines that had purple flowers growing. They were pretty. Soon, the vines with purple flowers were on the ground, and we were walking into the structure.

The structure wasn't built to human specifications. The doors were narrow and tall. They slide open by our motion, even after years of neglect.

A couple of turns in, and suddenly my headache ends. It simple turns off. I take in the facility more fully. The building is not Covenant, not human, not any race I've ever even heard of. It is beautiful. Like if an architect had free reign to make a structure as beautiful as they wanted, without regards to functionality.

"My head's stopped hurting." I tell him.

"I figured that would happen when we got below the transmitter." He acknowledged. "Unless you want to live here though, we need to find a way to turn it off. Otherwise we won't be able to find any other survivors, or get off this planet."

"Obviously." I snipe. There haven't been any 'computer terminals' as I recognize them. Just smooth black walls and floors, lit by lights so high up that I can't quite make them out.

We find something that looks like a lift. It opens up as we near it, the inside is lit brightly. I half expect to hear music playing like they do on lifts back on Earth.

The door opens up on to a room that has only one chair in the center, with a light on it. The chair is metal. It's made like someone's taken a medical chair and stretched it out.

"So, computer." I say looking at it, noticing the interfacing connections set up underneath it. Neural interface, no doubt, the kind that attach into the central nervous system and put in information as fast as the mind can handle it.

"It's a neural interface."

"Yep." I pull my flash light out, and shine it around the dark room. Blank walls, floor, and ceiling except for the one light over the chair. "Looks like it's the only way." I say softly.

Charles the Spartan is already walking towards the chair. He's slung his assault rifle, obviously prepared to sit down and 'interface' with the alien computer.

"Wait-"My mouth opens up of its own accord to counter him. "I should do it."

"Explain." He says critically, looking at me.

"You're wired for the ship AI's, specifically Apolloiana. This is an alien system. My head's unformatted, if one of us can do it, it'll be me. Besides which, you've got the bigger gun." I smile at him hoping that it works.

"This is dangerous." He says critically.

"I know." I push pass him and to the chair. I sit down on it tentatively, leaning back so my neck will line up with the interfacing probes. I hear the dim whir of old devices coming to life again.

"Its going to hurt."

"That's also a given." I wink at him, just as I feel something pierce into the back of my neck. The wink turns to a closed eye scream.


End file.
